Confessing Evangelical

Vladimir Putin joins the Guardian commentariat to tell the world, with an admirably straight face, that the US must stop acting unilaterally outside its territory and instead behave according to the "uncontested" political principles of "openness, transparency and predictability".

As one commenter puts it on the Guardian website:

Anna Politkovskaya, Igor Domnikov, Sergey Novikov, Iskandar Khatloni, Sergey Ivanov, Adam Tepsurgayev, Eduard Markevich, Natalya Skryl, Valery Ivanov, Dmitry Shvets, Paul Klebnikov, Magomedzagid Varisov, and Alexander Litvinenko could not be reached for comment.

Labels: guardian, politics, pots and kettles, putin

Great article by Jon Ronson in yesterday's Guardian Weekend magazine, in which Ronson seeks to find out who are the most favoured targets for junk mailers.

He does this by creating a number of personas - Happy Ronson the ultra-ethical green consumer, Paul Ronson the suave millionaire, George Ronson the elderly Daily Express reader and Titch Ronson the unemployed, single 38-year old who spends far beyond his limited means on pornography, gambling, martial arts magazines and Nazi memorabilia - and signs each one up to a representative sample of services and products, "forgetting" in each case to tick the marketing opt-out box. He then waits to see who gets the most junk mail.

Depressingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, it is Titch Ronson who proves the most alluring magnet to direct marketers, especially those selling financial services:

Titch has so far been offered loans by Ocean Finance, Shakespeare Finance, e-loanshop.com, TML Mortgage Solutions, loans.co.uk, Blair Endersby, easyloans.co.uk, an MBNA Platinum card and an American Express Red card.

What is it that makes Titch such a catch? Ronson eventually catches up with the company that sold Titch's details on to these finance companies (most of whom are in what you might call the "Bad credit? Good credit!" sector), a free online lottery called Loopy Lotto. Loopy Lotto's director, Dan Bannister, has a clear-eyed view of his subscriber base:

"People who are looking for something for nothing and are into instant gratification ... It's not a massively upmarket list."

Ronson explains his experiment, and in particular how Titch Ronson found himself bombarded by junk mail from companies that had bought his details from Loopy Lotto. Be warned - Dan's reply is about to take us to the dark underbelly of the direct marketing world:

Dan nods, pleased and unsurprised. He explains that Titch sounds classically, enticingly, "sub-prime". "Sub-prime is the golden egg," Dan says. "If, as a direct marketer, you can identify sub-prime characteristics, you can do very well."

Dan goes on to explain that "the vast majority of junk mail - be it loans or otherwise - is directed at the sub-prime market":

"The best thing you can tell a client is that you can accurately identify sub-prime individuals. Which is why, when people are asked to fill in lifestyle surveys, they'll often see questions like, 'Have you ever experienced difficulty getting credit?' or, 'Have you ever missed a mortgage payment?' Those are the sorts of triggers that will identify you as potentially sub-prime."

As Ronson observes:

It is slightly chilling to realise there are rational, functional people up there employed to spot, nurture and exploit those down here among us who are irrational and can barely cope. If you want to know how stupid you're perceived to be by the people up there, count the unsolicited junk mail you receive. If you get a lot, you're perceived to be alluringly stupid.

This unpleasant truth is confirmed when Ronson visits Stuart Dagg of the company Sonar, which produces computer software used by "list brokers". Initially, Stuart follows the party line as he explains the company's activities:

We continue silently to watch the PowerPoint presentation until we get to the part where the postcodes of every British household are divided into four social types: "Wealthy", "Comfortable", "Less Comfortable", and "Struggling".

"The formula is very simple," he tells me. "A company like MBNA will market to these people." He points at the word "Wealthy". "But they won't market to these." He points at the word "Struggling".

"Why not?" I ask.

"Because the last thing a credit card company wants is to have customers default on their loans," Stuart explains.

All well and good, but what about Titch Ronson? Titch, who earns less than £10,000 per year but spends between £10,000 and £24,000 on his credit card (according to the lifestyle survey completed in his name)? How come he gets bombarded by credit offers while affluent Paul Ronson gets nothing?

"OK," Stuart says, cutting me off. I look at his finger. It's hovering over the word "Wealthy". "I suppose," he says, "this is a bit more real world..."

His finger begins to move southwards down the list, past "Comfortable", and comes to rest somewhere between "Less Comfortable" and "Struggling".

"Yes," he says, almost as if he's admitting it to himself for the first time. "This is a more, uh, real-world example of who will be marketed to."

UK readers will probably want to click here, next...

Labels: direct marketing, exploitation, guardian, isaiah 3:15